Walkthrough: Joining a Team Project
This walkthrough describes what steps you as a team member need to take to connect to your team project and begin working.
Tasks illustrated in this walkthrough include:
Adding a team project.
Viewing the project portal.
Prerequisites
To complete this walkthrough, you need:
A connection to a Team Foundation Server.
The AdventureWorks team project. To create this team project, see Walkthrough: Creating a New Team Project.
Permissions as described in the following section.
Required Permissions
To join a team project you must be a member of both the Team Foundation Valid Users security group and the Readers security group for the team project. If the necessary security permissions are set explicitly, then you must have the View server-level information permission set to Allow and the View project-level information permission on the team project set to Allow. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.
Adding a Team Project
Software projects in Visual Studio Team Explorer are called team projects. The team project is the central concept that focuses the team effort of creating a specific software technology or product. When you join a team project, you get access to several areas that centralize team efforts on that team project:
A team project Web site containing document templates.
A team project reporting site containing predefined reports.
A work item database for tracking all effort on the project.
Process guidance, iterations, starter tasks, and work items based on the process template used to create the team project.
A source code branch for source code control.
A build database for tracking build types and status.
Team projects are stored on a Team Foundation Server; therefore, you must connect to a Team Foundation Server. For more information, see How to: Connect to Team Foundation Server
First, add the AdventureWorks team project to Team Explorer.
To add a team project
On the View menu, click Team Explorer.
Team Explorer appears.
On the File menu, point to Open, and click Team Project.
In the Connect to Team Foundation Server dialog box, under Team Projects, select the AdventureWorks check box.
Click OK.
Viewing the Project Portal
The project portal provides a central location for the team to find, share, and connect to project documents, process guidance, and reports.
To view the project portal
- In Team Explorer, right-click the AdventureWorks node, and select Show Project Portal.
Viewing your Work Items
The Work Items node contains various queries to locate and work with bugs, requirements, tasks, and other work item types. You can also add new work items or go directly to a work item if you know the ID.
To find all work items assigned to you
In Team Explorer, expand the AdventureWorks node, expand the Work Items node, and then expand the Team Queries node.
Right-click the My Work Items query, and select View Results.
The work items assigned to you are displayed.
Note
The list may be empty if you did not create the AdventureWorks team project.
Next Steps
Now that you have joined a team project, you can begin working in the team project. Consider following these additional steps:
You might want to create your own queries for finding work items. For more information, see Walkthrough: Tracking Work Items
If you are developing code, you may also want to explore source control. For more information, see Walkthrough: Exploring Team Foundation Source Control.